David Kaye
| The name or term "David" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see David (disambiguation). |
David Kaye (born David V. Hope on October 14, 1964) is a Canadian voice actor and, man, he is in everything. Some of his more popular roles in the world of cartoons include Professor Xavier in X-Men Evolution, Khyber and several Omnitrix aliens in Ben 10: Omniverse, Superman and Hawkman in DC Super Friends, Iron Man in Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, and he's well known within the G.I. Joe franchise, having voiced General Hawk in both the final season of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and in Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles, and Patrick O'Hara (father to Scarlett) in G.I. Joe: Renegades.
In the world of dubbing, he's played Treize Khushrenada in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Sesshomaru in InuYasha, Recoome in the Ocean Group dub of Dragon Ball Z, Protoman.EXE in Mega Man NT Warrior, and Batou in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. In video games, he's best known as Clank in the Ratchet and Clank series, played Captain America and Nick Fury in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, Mysterio in Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions, Commissoner Gordon in Batman: Arkham City, and Logan Carter in Dead Island.
He is also the announcer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and voiced all those commercials for Viagra featuring the eternally-creepily-smiling "Bob"; he's also been a voiceover for various local TV stations in the US (though he's not as commonly heard as others in the field like Scott Chapin (who mainly works for Fox stations) or Charlie van Dyke (who VOs all the ABC owned stations and some NBC affiliates).
Kaye originally began his voice acting career as a member of the Canadian voice acting union, doing voice over work exclusively in Canada. In 2007, he moved to the US, joining the American voice acting union in LA and now does voice over work exclusively in the States.
Voice roles
Beast Wars
Beast Wars Transmetals Game
- Megatron
- Megatron X
Beast Machines
- Megatron
- Savage/Noble
Armada
Energon
- Megatron/Galvatron
- Unicron
Cybertron
- Megatron/Galvatron
Transformers Animated
- Optimus Prime
- Lugnut
- Security Bot ("Total Meltdown")
- Grimlock
- Trash Bot (Sound and Fury)
- News Bot (Headmaster)
- Sparkplug
- Cliffjumper
- Highbrow
- Warpath
- Dead End (Botcon 2011 Script Reading)
- Toxitron (Botcon 2011 Script Reading)
Incidentals
- Technician 1 ("Transform and Roll Out")
- Firefighter ("Transform and Roll Out")
- Fan #2 ("Transform and Roll Out")
- Fan #1 ("Home Is Where the Spark Is")
- Nature Show Narrator ("Home Is Where the Spark Is")
- Customer ("Nanosec")
- Man ("Along Came a Spider")
- Intercom Voice ("Sound and Fury")
- Irate Citizen ("Garbage In, Garbage Out")
- Driver ("Velocity")
Transformers Prime
Transformers: Robots in Disguise
Convention appearances
Notes
- He is the only voice actor who has voiced both Optimus Prime and Megatron as regular roles. Kaye has also lent his voice to eight separate Transformers series, the most for any single Transformers voice actor.
- Ironically, when auditioning for Beast Wars, Kaye originally read for the role of Optimus Primal while Garry Chalk read for the sinister Megatron.
- Bill Fagerbakke says his mom is hot. This disturbs him. And us.
- Kaye was interviewed as a special feature for Kid Rhino's Beast Machines The Complete Series DVD set, and also on Madman Entertainment's Beast Wars season 3 box set.
- He has been known to oblige requests at conventions to sing the Sesame Street Rubber Ducky song in his Beast Wars Megatron voice. And to this day, it's very catchy.
- When Transformers fan Moosetron was dying of leukemia in late 2013, Kaye recorded a private video greeting for him as a final Christmas gift, partially done in character as Armada Galvatron, along with Steve Blum.
